Sailing for business
Gerald A. "Jerry" Bourque, of Destrehan, tells of his days as a foreman in the electrical/electronics department at Avondale Shipyard:
"One of my jobs was to represent the department on sea trials of repaired or newly built ships with a crew of mostly ex-military technicians.
"Our area of operations was usually the Gulf of Mexico.
"One night, north of the Yucatán area of Mexico, I was on the bridge of one of our ships looking over the navigation instruments.
"In the distance, I saw a shadowy something off our starboard bow. I pointed it out to the captain; an unlighted sailboat came into view, about to crash into our starboard bow.
"The captain shouted, 'Hard starboard!' and the bow twirled around the sailboat and pushed our stern out of its path!
“'Wow! Where did that come from?' I said.
"The captain smiled and told me, 'This always happens on trips near Yucatán. Sailboats are wood and radar doesn't see them. They are smuggling drugs without navigation lighting.'"
The un-politician
Earl Newman, of Ïã¸ÛÁùºÍ¿ª½±ÀúÊ·¼Ç¼, says, "Dan Self’s Monday story about losing the school election by one vote when he voted for his opponent reminded me of the time in the eighth grade ('57-58) at Prescott Junior High.
"It was my first year in public school, having gone through the first seven years at St. Gerard (Redemptorist).
"I was a nervous new student, and in civics class, we were assigned to write a political story.
"The teacher said she couldn’t decide between mine and a girl's.
"So she asked the class to close our eyes with our heads down on our desks and raise our hand to vote when the person's name was called.
"I voted for the girl — and she won by one vote.
"That incident may have caused society to miss out on the promise of what I could achieve in politics due to the fact that I never ran for office because of that near miss and ultimate humiliation."
Special People Dept.
Mike and Gaylynn Ford, of Lacombe, celebrated their 60th anniversary Thursday, April 18. A celebration with friends and family was held Saturday, April 20.
Cyber ant?
Ernie Gremillion, of Ïã¸ÛÁùºÍ¿ª½±ÀúÊ·¼Ç¼, found that today it's hard to tell the real thing from its computer-generated version.
"Doing my regular computer check, at one point I noticed an ant crawling on the upper right-hand part of the screen.
"I tried to squash it when it got to the top, which caused me to accidentally change the screen. When the screen changed, the ant disappeared — which meant that the ant was part of what the computer was showing and not real. Go figure."
Write Smiley at Smiley@theadvocate.com. He can also be reached by mail at P.O. Box 2304, Ïã¸ÛÁùºÍ¿ª½±ÀúÊ·¼Ç¼, LA 70821.
